


Le Livre

by Wind_Ryder



Series: Methuselah's Children [9]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Depression, Found Family, Gratuitous Novel References, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Not Fluff, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Therapy via Book Club
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-30
Updated: 2020-08-05
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:13:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 15,981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25603387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wind_Ryder/pseuds/Wind_Ryder
Summary: Booker's transition into the team didn't go smoothly. And after his exile, he doubts it will ever be considered smooth again.But then he gets a book in the mail, and a postcard.Nicky wants to have a weekly book club with him, and it almost feels like a second chance.
Relationships: Booker | Sebastien le Livre & Nicky | Nicolo di Genova, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Series: Methuselah's Children [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1839811
Comments: 275
Kudos: 941





	1. Holes by Louis Sachar

**Author's Note:**

> It isn't necessary to read the rest of the series to understand this one.
> 
> Key points that do get occasionally alluded to, though: Andy/Lykon/Quynh were in a relationship together for a long time. 
> 
> Yusuf/Nicolo adopted children every so often. Although they came to terms with their children's mortality, they do still mourn for them occasionally.

The nineteenth-century didn’t start well. They weren’t together when it happened, Andromache had left almost four decades earlier, and Nicolo and Yusuf looked after two children before they saw her again. 

She never asked them what they’d been doing while she’d been gone either. They didn’t ask her in return. Their time apart was always personal. That’s the way it always was and always had to be. When she found them in Malta, she’d done so with unknowingly excellent timing. They’d just finished burying their final child. 

“I want to kill something,” she announced when she let herself into their home in spring 1808. Neither of them had it in them to argue. “Let’s go to the Americas,” she said next. “There are bound to be people to kill there.” America was far away from Europe. It sounded wonderful. 

They packed up their things and left the next day.

Four years later, they’d not only found people to kill but a war to fight. They ran through the Great Lakes territories, fighting the British and engaging in squabbles with British-sympathizers. 

The cold winter near the Great Lakes threatened to freeze them day in and day out. Their names changed to suit the environment. On Canadian soil: Nicholas and Joseph slept with Andy between them, shivering under a too thin blanket as they tried to keep warm. During the day, Andy wrapped cloth tight around her chest, and donned ill fitting clothes to fit in with the rest of the soldiers. Her hair had been shorter since Quynh died, but now she had it cut unfashionably short giving her sharp features an even more severe look. And when she fought, she killed her quarries as if they had personally offended her. 

When the dream came, it was almost a relief. Fighting wars took forever, and no matter how certain they all were that they’d come back to life: sometimes tempting that fate with a cannon in the chest was not a way they actively wanted to chase. 

“At least the Terror is over,” Nicholas said after they woke up and realized what had happened. Joseph glowered at him at Andy’s side. “Think of the wine,” he offered as a balm, but he said nothing else for the rest of the night. 

Andy began making plans to leave, and within a week they were on a ship heading to France. They stopped at a cave they’d stayed in many years before, and studiously attempted to ignore its newest addition. A portrait of Andromache and a black man they never met, looking happier than either Nicholas or Joseph could remember her being since Quynh died. 

Andy dragged a cloth over it, as if it could hide the past from their minds, and for a time it even worked. 

But then they were denied by the very person they’d come to meet. Nicholas rubbed the back of his head as he watched Andy march from one side to the other. She kept making it to the painting, scowling, then about-facing to stomp as far away as possible. Then she’d do it again. And again. And again. It forced them to notice it. Remember it. Soak in the feelings that poured off it and reminded them too much of another painting, unfinished, waiting for their return in Malta. 

“What do we do now, Andy? Nicholas asked, desperate for a chance to just leave France and not look back. He liked the name she’d chosen for herself. Liked how it felt on his tongue. He was never certain if changing their names made any difference at all, but Andy felt right to him in a way that calling Yusuf, _Joseph,_ still chafed. 

“It’s not like we can drag him out by his hair,” Andy spat back. 

Joseph hummed in agreement. “It’s too short for that.” She glowered at him, but he wasn’t paying attention. He was too busy setting up mats for them to sleep on. “At least it’s warm here. I was so tired of being in Canada, and I do _not_ miss the ocean at all.”

Nicholas muttered something, then, and Andy snapped for him to speak up. “I don’t like France,” he repeated with just as much vitriol. 

“Since when?” Andy asked incredulously. 

“Since they decided that the torture and murder of children was a valid political opinion,” he spat back, gritting his teeth as he threw himself onto the bedrolls Joseph had prepared. Andy glanced at Joseph, miming a question with her face alone. He shook his head and settled next to Nicholas. He didn’t try to touch him, Nicholas was acting far too prickly for such things. 

“The wine’s terrible now too,” Joseph said instead. He plucked their last reserve from the crate they’d been managing their supplies in. 

“Don’t start on the damned wine,” Andy muttered. Her irritation was so tangible that it cut like a knife. She’d been right where she’d wanted to be in Canada — slaughtering her enemy, thrilling at the sounds of their deaths. This. _Whatever_ this was with God-damned Sebastien Le Livre was absurd. “No one’s ever said no before,” She grit out. 

“Technically he did not say _no,_ so much as he asked for more time,” Nicholas quibbled. 

“Is this the first time a man’s ever said no to you?” Joseph asked, blinking at Andy in dumb shock. Nicholas and Andy both turned back to him. 

For the first time in years — they laughed. 

In the morning, they left France. 

A letter arrived for Sebastien Le Livre the next day. It read: _When you’re ready to not be alone, you can find us in Reisa._

He didn’t respond for more than fifty years. 

When he did, he told them he never wanted to be alone again. 

Just over one hundred and fifty years later, all of them broke that promise to each other. And all of them blamed someone else for why it turned out the way it did. 

* * *

The first book arrives almost two weeks into Booker’s exile. It’s a children’s story. _Holes_ by Louis Sachar. There’s a postcard with it, segmenting pages like a brightly colored bookmark. It says London on one side, and on the other in deep blue ink, there are only two sentences and an initial. _Book club? Call you in a week. N._

For half a second, Booker thinks it might have been Nile who sent it. It’s the kind of cheery nonsense that would make the most sense from a baby immortal who hasn’t yet been turned jaded by time. But the lettering is too dated for Nile. Each letter is too carefully composed, and Booker’s seen that flourishing N before. So he does the only thing he can think of. He says: “What the fuck, Nicky?” and he tosses the book in the trash. 

It sits in the bin for three days before he fishes it out. Its very presence had made it impossible to throw anything away. Every time he tried, he’d see it there, waiting. Rescuing the book is the only way he can talk himself into disposing the food cartons and trash that desperately needed relocating. 

Books weren’t a _new_ thing between them. Andy wasn’t a big reader and Joe apparently preferred Nicky to read them _to_ him rather than go through the effort to read a book on his own. Booker called him illiterate once, and Joe laughed and refuted it immediately. “Why bother reading a novel when someone can do all the work for you?” Still, more often than not, during their downtime Booker found Nicky flicking through the pages of various sized volumes. He’d read them quietly, to himself, and Joe would be nowhere in sight. 

They’d trade notes here or there, sometimes even debate the finer points of a story while they flew from one job to the next. In Chile they bent their heads over Isabelle Allende and debated the works of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. In Italy they both read _My Beautiful Friend._ In Canada they devoured Margaret Atwood. In Japan they read Haruki Murakami. They lambasted Ernest Hemingway and argued over the classics. Nicky thought the _Iliad_ was superior to the _Odyssey_ , and Booker had never been truly impassioned one way or another but the sheer vivacity of the fight was worth championing the _Odyssey_ for as long as it took for Nicky to concede.

That fight is over eighty years old by now and Booker nearly chokes on the revelation that it still isn’t done. It makes him miss his brother so badly that it burns a hole into his chest. A hole made more ironic by the very title of the book Nicky apparently deemed worthy enough to break the exile Booker’s supposed to be following. 

Booker starts reading _Holes_ the night before Nicky’s theoretically going to call. He finishes it in a couple of hours and cannot for the life of him fathom why _this_ book. Why _this_ book out of every book Nicky could have sent him? He flips back to the first page and starts reading it again. _There is no lake at Camp Green Lake…_

And yet when he finishes it for the third time just as his cell phone rings, he’s no closer to figuring out what he was supposed to do with this book. He answers his phone as casually as he can, but the irritation is starting to grind under his skin. “Hello Booker,” Nicky starts, sounding more awkward than Booker’s ever heard him sound in all the many years of their acquaintance. 

“Phone calls allowed?” Booker asks, knowing full well he’s spoiling for a fight.

“They were not _not_ allowed,” Nicky replies vaguely. 

It’s quiet behind him, Booker can’t pick up a single bit of background noise. He can’t tell where Nicky’s calling from, or even if he’s alone. “And what’d you tell Joe when you slipped away to call me?”

There’s a pause. A sigh. Then: “I told him I was going to slip away to call you.” That takes some of the fight out of Booker’s blood, but not much. Instead, it’s replaced with a deeper pain. A more familiar one. Of course Joe knew. Of course he’d accept it. He would do anything Nicky asked of him. That’s what they were to each other. Stupidly accepting, always. “Did you read the book?” It’s the best distraction Nicky could have given him. 

Immediately, Booker affirms. “What the fuck, Nicky?” 

“You didn’t like it?” 

“Like it? There’s some fucked up shit in that book, you know that right?” And just like that he’s talking. He hates the way the Yelnats family gets cursed and the way that it carried on for generations. He hates how breaking the curse came about from two people who never really understood what it even meant. He hates that Kate Barlow died just for being in love with someone the rest of the world didn’t approve of.

He hates how, most of all, the more he talks about it to Nicky the more allusions he can make to the past few years of his life. And that makes him even angrier. “It’s not the fucking same,” he finishes once he’s got no breath left in his lungs to go on. 

“I never said it was,” Nicky replies with such unimpressed candor that Booker wishes he were there just so he could punch him in the nose. “It’s a children’s book,” Nicky says, as if Booker hadn’t just revealed the secret motive behind giving him the book. As if this really _was_ a book club. “What did you think of that? Is it a good medium for such a story?” 

“Thinking of writing one about us?” Booker spits out. 

“No, though Nile might one day. She seems the type.” 

She did. Booker could see it too. “Probably end up being a comic book. Make everyone all proper badasses that way.” 

“Mm..and Andy wouldn’t die in it. She’d stay immortal forever.” The reminder hurts worse than the last revelation. Booker flinches away from it. 

“Yeah,” he agrees. There’s nothing else he can say to it. He swallows hard, blinking at tears that have started to build up unbiddenly. “That’s the thing with kids stories. They always get a happy ending. Real life doesn’t go that way.”

“I guess we’ll see.” He asks a few more questions then. He offers his own opinion easily when Booker pressures him for it. It’s _nice._ Nice in a way that Booker hadn’t expected it to be nice. The fight bleeds out of him. He talks to his brother, and they refrain from mentioning anything else about their shitty personal lives. They just talk. They even laugh, once, about the names in the book. About what it’d be like to live with a name like Stanley Yelnats. Nicky even calls him Ervil at one point and they laugh about that too. And when they’re done, Nicky has the decency to ask: “What book should we read for next week?” 

It takes Booker’s breath away. “Next week?” he asks fuzzily. 

“One hundred years is a long time,” Nicky replies. “Book club is not such a bad way to be together, is it?” 

“I’m supposed to be alone,” Booker reminds him with the self-preservation of a dodo. 

“None of us are meant to be alone,” Nicky says, firm and uncompromising. “It’s destiny.”

It’s _painful._ Booker closes his eyes and remembers the betrayal on their faces. The way they’d walked away and left him by the Thames. He can still feel his ears ringing from how Joe yelled at him. _Selfish piece of shit!_ It was just as true then as it is now. He’s selfish. “You really like my company that much?” 

“Yes.” Swift and certain, no doubt. 

“And Joe…”

“He needs time.” Equally swift, though more delicately rendered. Nicky doesn’t say it to hurt, just provide information. “What should we read next week, Sebastien?” 

“Dorian Gray,” he says before he can stop himself. It’s the only book he could think of when they’d been grinding out talk of curses. Nicky only takes a moment to think about it, but then hums his approval. 

“Which edition?”

“I...I don’t have a copy. I’ll get one, text it to you.” 

“Sounds good. Do it tomorrow, I need time to read it.” 

“Yeah, yeah okay.” And then they’re done. 

The call’s over. 

And Sebastien le Livre found himself in a bookclub.


	2. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

Booker finds two copies of  _ Le Portrait de Dorian Gray _ the next morning. Oscar Wilde sits in the picture frame on the cover. One hand holding his chin as he stares decadently at the reader. It’s been years since Booker read this book, and now that it’s in his hand he feels foolish for having even asked Nicky to read it. They’ll just circle back to the undercurrent that flowed around their first conversation. He should have chosen something else. 

Still. He walks the books up to the counter, pausing only when the clerk is about to scan the second copy when he realizes: he can’t buy Nicky’s. He has no idea where to send it, and it’ll take too long to get to him. Nicky will have to figure it out on his own. Gritting his teeth, he yanks the book off the clerk’s desk and shoves it back on the shelf. 

When he gets home, he sits on his bed and glares at his purchase. It’s in French. If Nicky’s not in France how is he supposed to pick up a copy of this book? He grits his teeth, hating the inconvenience that all of this is bringing about. He should have just told Nicky  _ no,  _ he’s not interested. And be done with it. 

Tugging his phone out of his pocket, he texts his brother:  _ Got the book, you should just get your own. The edition doesn’t really matter.  _

Nicky doesn’t immediately respond, and Booker’s irritation grows the longer he stares at the pixels waiting for something to change. He flips the book about in his hands, grinding his teeth. He has no idea what Nicky wants from him. If this is just checking up, then they don’t need to read books to do that. 

Maybe Nicky doesn’t actually want to talk to him about anything. Maybe he doesn’t want to go over things, or listen to Booker’s apologies— and Booker  _ would _ apologize. Again, and again, and again. He’d apologize as much as he needed to, and none of it would matter because Booker is exiled and he’s not supposed to be talking to Nicky, let alone be forgiven by Nicky, for another hundred years. 

His phone jingles. He squints at the screen. Nicky says:  _ Are you sure? :( - N _

Booker writes back:  _ Yeah, it’s not like you’re gonna be able to pick up the exact same book or have time to read it if you do.  _

There’s a slight pause, then he watches as a bubble indicating Nicky’s writing pops up. The little dots tap across the bubble then reset. Over and over again. One minute passes. Then another. Then a third. Booker’s fingers clench around his phone as the bubble times out. He wonders if Nicky’s still there. On the other side. He wonders if he should have just called. 

Then,  _ We can talk about the translation differences! ;) :D - N _

Booker snorts a laugh. He shakes his head, grinning at the stupid “N” that Nicky always adds to his texts. He tried explaining that Nicky didn’t need to sign them when texting first came out. It was obvious who the text was coming from, Nicky’s contact was already saved in his phone. But the little N persisted in every single message. Every form of communication. Until it even showed up on a postcard used as a bookmark, and an invitation to read. Nicky always texts with that little N, and always some emoticon. Never the actual pre-programmed faces, always typed in longhand. It’s so familiar, it hurts. 

_ Sure,  _ Booker texts back.  _ Should have picked something lighter,  _ he adds before he can stop himself. 

Nicky’s bubble appears, then disappears, in rapid succession. Like he started writing, erased it, and began again. Booker wonders what he’s up to. Where he and the others are. He wonders if Joe is scowling at Nicky, gritting his teeth as Nicky texts Booker unabashedly. He wonders if they’re lying in each other’s arms, discussing what to send him and why. 

No, Booker can’t remember Joe ever ordering Nicky to act a certain way or do a certain thing. He probably is just letting Nicky do whatever he wants. He probably just absolved himself of it all and walked away. 

His phone jingles.  _ Do you want to pick a different book? :) - N  _

_ No,  _ Booker writes back.  _ Already got it.  _

_ As long as you’re sure. :( - N _

_ You can change your mind. :) - N _

Kind Nicky. Sweet Nicky. Always thinking of others, Nicky. Never willing to put anyone out, Nicky. Never going to betray anyone because he knows better, Nicky. Booker glowers at the message. He squeezes the phone so tight his hand starts to ache. He punches his letters in with slow, precise movements. 

_ I’m sure. You don’t need to coddle me.  _

He needed to erase a couple of ‘fuckings’ from the text, but when he sends it, he’s pretty sure he got the point across. Nicky doesn’t respond. There’s not even a typing bubble. He must have read the message, and gotten the point. Booker glares at the phone. Well. He earned it didn’t he? 

Tossing it on the bed, he ignores it and the book for the rest of the day. He’d forgotten to get food while he was out, but there’s still a bottle of whiskey from the night before. Back when he first found out that he was immortal, it took him a few years to realize that if he wants to get shit-faced drunk, he needs to drink it hard and fast. Otherwise his body just metabolizes it like it would any other poison. 

He’s watched Andy chug a bottle of vodka straight and not even flinch. She’ll settle down to sleep at some point, but there’d be no hangover. No stumbling. Not even a slurred word. Some of it might be her natural constitution, but Booker’s tried getting to a point where he couldn’t think of anything but the feeling of his body tilting like a boat lost at sea. It took more than one bottle of vodka to manage that. 

It’d take more whiskey than he had. 

He drinks it anyway. 

It’s not like it can hurt him. 

* * *

Booker doesn’t text Nicky for the rest of the week. The book loiters by his bed, waiting to be picked up, and Booker tries to talk himself into doing it. Every time he gets the spine cracked, the same first few words about beauty and art start flowing through his mind, he snaps it shut again. 

What did Oscar Wilde ever know about beauty? 

What could he possibly know about anything at all? 

Wilde had never seen a love that burned so hot and bright that it still hurt to look at after a millenium. He’d never seen Andy fresh from a bath, water dripping down her body in rivulets as she stroked her skin with terry cloth and languished on the sofa dressed only in a white robe. He’d never seen the devotion of immortals, when Booker had made one pass at Andy and she’d told him that she couldn’t. Not with him. Because it would mean too much if it was him, and she didn’t want it to mean anything at all. She still loved a woman lost at sea, and Booker understood that pain. Sometimes, when he closes his eyes, he can still see his wife. Sometimes he can even imagine her standing behind him like Eurydice, waiting to be led out of the underworld by a man who’s only capable of letting her down. 

Dorian Gray coveted beauty above all else, but Booker knows that there’s no sense in trying to keep it inside. Better to just destroy it all, so it doesn’t exist. Better to just break it down into its smallest components, and toss it to the wind. 

But Booker made a promise. 

And even Oscar Wilde’s adorations of beauty breaks down in the face of that promise. Booker had tried to destroy the happiness Nicky had with Joe. Reading Wilde is a choice Booker made to begin with. Following through to the end is the least he can do. 

It still takes him days to manage the task. 

Every chapter burns in his gut. The words threaten to block the flow of blood to his heart. His brain feels heavy and lopsided. Alcohol never fucked him up this badly, and he wishes madly for it to just stop. He starts skimming pages rather than reading them. He absorbs the general idea but not the precise diction used. He’s reading. It might not be  _ good  _ reading, but he’s reading. Surely Nicky will accept that? 

When the end comes, Booker forces himself to read the last paragraph. Forces himself to absorb the words and set them to the side. And when he’s done, he finally lets himself purge. He coughs and gags in the toilet, shivering as emotions roil throughout his body. 

He drags himself to the bed and closes his eyes. He wills himself to sleep. 

He wakes up to Nicky calling almost twenty hours later. “Nicky,” Booker greets wearily. 

“Hello Booker,” Nicky greets in turn. 

“I hate this book.” 

“Mm...we should have changed it.” 

“I chose it.” 

“You could have chosen a different one.” 

“I already bought it.” 

“If that’s how you feel.” It’s still quiet on Nicky’s side of the phone. Not even a car horn blaring in the background. Booker wishes he could hear something. Someone. A dish getting washed in the sink. A laugh at the TV. Something. 

“He just wanted what he couldn’t have,” Booker says.

“Do you think that?” 

“That’s what the book is about.” 

“Maybe. You don’t think he could have had it if he become a better person?” 

Already the parallels come up in his mind. He tries to shove them away, but it isn’t happening. He glowers at a stack of laundry sitting in for Nicky’s physical form. It gives him something to glare at. Something to hate. He can’t hate Nicky in reality. He loves him too much for that. “He tried that. He fucked it up.” 

Nicky laughs humorlessly under his breath. “Only because he was selfish. He didn’t actually  _ want  _ to be a better person.” 

“He didn’t know how. He tried.” 

“Did he?” Booker can’t tell if they’re still talking about Gray or not. He feels stupidly like shouting  _ I’m trying, I’m trying can’t you see me trying?  _ He doesn’t. But it’s a near thing. 

“He  _ tried.”  _

“He tried because he wanted his portrait to reflect a beautiful version of him, and not the ugliness inside. He did not try to do good because it was the right thing to do.” 

“Well how does anyone get better then?” Booker shouts. “How does anyone do the right thing once they know doing the right thing is going to give them a reward? What the fuck is the point of doing anything at all if there’s no reward at the end of it?” 

For several moments, Booker fears he’s chased Nicky away. There’s silence on the other side. Not pure silence, Book can still hear Nicky breathing, but it’s quiet enough that fear starts sliding through him. He feels the apologies forming on his tongue. He feels his desperation growing.  _ Don’t leave. Not now. Don’t hang up _ . He doesn’t get a chance to say anything like that, though. 

Nicky responds. Quiet and gentle, Nicky responds. “Sometimes doing the right thing doesn’t give you a reward. Sometimes it only hurts. But you do it because it’s right. Because it isn’t about personal gratification, it’s about helping others.” He takes a deep breath then. “Gray...Gray prefaced his actions by thinking that just by doing the action he’d be rewarded. He didn’t actually want to be a good person. The action was good, but it left his soul weak. Doing good has to be a choice, always. It can’t just be an excuse. Perhaps if he gave himself more time...thought more about what it was he was doing and the impact he was giving to society... _ enjoyed  _ helping others for the sake of it, perhaps then his portrait would have begun to change for the better.” 

“He had years of sins built up. It never would have looked right again.” 

This time, when Nicky laughs it sounds almost right. He huffs, and Booker can imagine him rolling his eyes. The stack of shirts in the corner even looks more amused on Nicky’s behalf. A cloud has moved just enough to shine some sun on them. “All sins can be forgiven. Perhaps he should have tried to forgive  _ himself  _ first.”

Nicky couldn’t have hurt him more if he tried. Pain slashes through Booker hard and fast. He chokes on his air, and it’s loud enough that Nicky actually gasps on the other end of the line. He says Booker’s name, but Booker isn’t interested anymore. Fuck Book Club. Fuck Nicky. And Fuck whatever psychological game he’s playing. Booker hangs up, tosses his phone at the laundry, and goes to find the highest proof alcohol he can.

* * *

Three days later, a package arrives on his doorstep. 

He opens it with shaking hands. 

Inside, is a book and a postcard. 

_ The Hobbit _ by J. R. R. Tolkien. 

The card, this time from Malta, says:  _ Sorry. This one is lighter. Please keep reading with me? - N  _

And damn him, but Booker finishes reading the book only a few hours later. 

He texts Nicky when he’s done.  _ It’s a good book.  _

Immediately, he gets a response.  _ Same time on Sunday? :D - N _

_ Yeah _ , he writes.  _ Same time.  _

Then he sits down, and reads it again. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you have a book you want them to read - feel free to let me know!


	3. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkein and Dom Casmurro by Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis

“Oh God, Nicky, do you remember the  _ walking _ ?” Booker’s walking right now. He’s meandering about his apartment, picking up this bit of trash and organizing this table here. Every few steps, he’d return to his noodle bowl and take another forkful before continuing about his stroll. “Best part about the twentieth century, hands down, is travel. I  _ love  _ cars.”

“You love  _ motorbikes _ ,” Nicky corrects with a laugh. “Cars were just one step along the way.” 

_ “Bikes!”  _ Booker moans, thinking about the hand built piece of shit that he’d worked on and off for at least half a decade before he finally got all the parts in the right place. He’d called everyone out to see its grand reveal. Joe passed out beers and cheered him on as he revved the ol’girl’s engine and set her loose. They’d laughed and applauded at all the right moments as he wheelied and stoppied and chased his own shadow in the sun. 

“God, can you imagine how fast they could have gotten to Lonely Mountain if they all had  _ bikes? _ ” 

Nicky’s laugh sounds very nearly unhinged as he chortles into the phone. “I’m trying to imagine a throng of dwarves on motorcycles to begin with,” he admits. 

“Don’t forget Gandlaf.” 

“What, does he have Bilbo in a sidecar?” 

“Yes!” Booker shoves another round of noodles into his mouth. “But seriously, it was like what? Thousand miles? Give or take? From Hobbiton? Including their little trip to Rivendell? So Let’s say they’re taking it easy, nice strolling-average pace of thirty-five miles an hour and they rode for about six hours a day. It’d have taken them  _ five days  _ to get to the Lonely Mountain. Five!  _ And _ , if they stayed on the damn path instead of getting sidetracked — it’d have taken even less time.” 

“So you believe the story would be much improved with motorbikes?” Nicky asks, still giggling like a child. 

“Maybe not  _ improved _ , but certainly less distracted! They kept going off in the wrong direction over and over again!” 

“There are more distractions when you’re walking.” The concession is made with a wet coughing sound, like Nicky’s trying to rein in his laughter but is failing miserably. It’s so good to hear him laugh that Booker starts shining down his countertop with a cloth. “I do not miss cross-country travel, I admit.” 

“How many miles do you think we’ve walked in our lifetimes?” Booker asks. 

His brother hums, consideringly. Booker can just imagine him tilting his head to one side as he ponders. “I cannot remember all the places I’ve been to and when,” he admits eventually. “It must be millions of miles.”

Booker tries to imagine that.  _ Millions  _ of miles. He snatches his laptop up from where it’s been charging and flips it about so he can load up google. Nicky must hear him typing, because he’s fallen quiet. Not uncomfortably quiet, just...waiting. It’s almost nice. A few clicks later, and Booker has the answer he was looking for. “Andy’s lived long enough to walk to Mars.” 

“What?” 

“Yeah, just googled it. It’d take four-thousand years to walk to Mars at an average walking speed of five miles an hour. It’s...about thirty-three and sixty million miles away on its rotation. So yeah, if she timed it right. She could have walked to Mars.”

“What about me?” Nicky asks. “How far could I go?” 

“Not to Mars,” Booker replies. He types in his next set of queries, and then pauses. “Huh.”

“What?” 

“Nothing, it’s just. The moon. We’d definitely make it to the moon.” 

“You too?” 

“Yeah, probably, it’d be close since I took a few years off, but yeah. I think...I think I’ve walked far enough to get to the moon. 163 years of constant walking. I’d get there, but not back. You...you’d be there and back again at least four or five times.” 

They’d gathered around the TV in a shitty little hotel in Poland in 1969 to watch the Apollo mission take off. All of them had watched with baited breath as the rocket screamed up into the air. And then, later, they’d watched Neil Armstrong take the first steps on the moon. Prayers slipped from Nicky’s lips, then, in shock at the scene. He’d been gripping Joe’s hand so tight that Booker could have sworn he heart something crack. But when it happened, when they finally saw the flag go up and the astronauts take their first steps, there’d been nothing but pure excitement and wonder. 

Nicky bought every book on astrophysics he could get his hands on for years. He tracked down mathematical formulae and sketched out equations like Joe would sketch out a portrait. Sometimes, their safe-houses had telescopes in them, and Booker would catch him looking up at the stars late at night when everyone else had gone to bed. 

Andy had never been as interested in it. The moon was just another place she couldn’t die. And later, when Apollo Thirteen happened, she grew even less inclined to discuss the possibilities. She didn’t like the idea of getting stranded out in space anymore than they liked the memories of Quynh lost at sea. 

Space is a frontier not meant for them, but Nicky loves it. Is perpetually mystified by it. The knowledge that he’d travelled far enough to reach the moon must stir something in him. “That’s amazing,” Nicky whispers. 

Booker’s finished his noodles by now. The flat’s put back together in a pretty decent way. All that’s left is to finish the conversation. He knows it’s coming. It’s been leading in this direction for a while. They’d talked about characterization and motivations. They’d talked about the verbiage and their favorite parts. Now they’re off on tangents about space, and Booker feels a thread of anxiety when he realizes that soon it will be the end. 

Naturally, Nicky clears his throat. “Thank you for talking with me,” he says, as if Booker’s the one doing him a favor and not the other way around. “Would you like to pick the next book?” Nicky asks. 

And this time, Booker’s thought about it. He’s thought about what kind of book he should mention. What kind of story they should get into. He’s got the world of options. He’d even checked in advance if there was a kindle copy Nicky could pick up if he couldn’t get his hands on a physical version of the book. There was. 

“ _ Dom Casmurro _ ,” he says. His voice doesn’t even crack. 

The delight that had been the staple of the last few moments of their phone call vanishes fully without so much as a noise of warning. Nicky’s breathing is low and quiet on the other end of the line. Tension bleeds through Booker’s body as he waits. “Booker...we do not  _ have  _ to read such heavy books. Sometimes it is nice to read something...gentle.” 

“Is it too much for you?” He knows that’s not what Nicky is saying. Nicky doesn’t even bother to answer the question. He just waits. Waits with a sniper’s patience until finally Booker breaks. “I need to talk about it. With someone.” 

“Don’t make me the whip you beat yourself with,” Nicky commands. 

“No. You’re making it better. I promise.” 

“Are you sure? You did not enjoy  _ Dorian Gray _ last week.” 

“Yeah,” Booker lies. “I’m sure.” 

“All right…” Nicky is entirely unconvinced, but it doesn’t matter. He’s agreed. 

They plan for a time for next Sunday, and then Nicky leaves. Booker takes a deep breath, looks at his perfect apartment, then knocks a glass on the floor to mess it all up again. 

He can pretend to be alive in seven days. For now, he sleeps. 

* * *

_ Dom Casmurro  _ is a book of themes. The chapters are short, some more reflective than introspective, but all moving forward along the trail of one of the emotional threads that weave the book into a tapestry of feelings. Guilt, betrayal, jealousy. Each one is a thread that ties the story from one end to another. Each one, Booker burns with as he lets himself  _ feel.  _

The main character, Bento Santiago, cannot be trusted, and yet: it is only through his eyes the story is revealed. Booker forces himself to read about the suspicion, the hatred, the fury. He reads how Bento—Dom Casmurro—doubted the fidelity of his wife and blamed his best friend for breeding a bastard on her. How he, in his hatred and selfishness, drove away his loved ones rather than listening to the truth. Their truth. The most certain truth. There had been no affair, no reason for jealousy, no reason to be upset. And yet he’d been jealous and selfish anyway. 

Booker read the book when it first came out in 1899. He read it because the Brazilians loved it and he was in Rio, then. He read it and hated Bento’s wife, Capitu, with every page. He hated her for lying to Bento, for having an affair, for raising a bastard and claiming it was Bento’s. And when the doubt set in and Booker realized the truth, he hated himself for hating Capitu. 

He doesn’t intend to fully read the book again during the week before Nicky calls. He buys a copy online, knowing his local bookstore wouldn’t have it in stock. It sits like a spam-ad on his laptop. Flashing in the corner, awaiting his attention. 

Booker joined the team officially after his final son died In 1854. He watched, jealous and filled with hatred, as they loved one another. Loved him. Claimed him as family. He loathed the sight of Joe and Nicky in each other’s arms. The way they slept so peacefully together. He loathed how Andy still treated Nicky like a child at times, after nearly eight-hundred years of companionship. How she touched the back of his neck when she hugged him. How she always went soft in his presence. 

_ I had a family,  _ Booker thought when he looked at them.  _ I had a family and they were better than all of you.  _

And yet his family had rejected him, turned on him, blamed him for living as they died. His family was rot beneath the floorboards, waiting for him to press weight on their beams so they could crumble beneath his feet and swallow him in mire. And  _ this  _ family. This family was light and generosity.  _ This  _ family, with its goal to help anyone and everyone worth helping. This family with its too sweet men and too powerful women, who swore they were honest and they loved him: This family could not be so perfect. 

There had to be a catch. 

And the catch, Booker knew, had been that he suspected a catch. 

He hated Nicky and Joe for being happy. He hated Andy for being sad. He hated himself for not accepting his own life. For just going with the flow of everything around him and wanting, desperately to be part of a world where he felt like he could belong. 

* * *

These are the facts. 

Nile was willing to let Booker off with an apology. She’d be willing to work with him again. 

Andy is dying and seemed to suggest that she might see Booker again prior to said death. Which means she’s probably flexible too. 

Nicky has arranged book club. He calls once a week. He’s willing to talk to Booker. That’s not nothing. 

Joe is a nonstarter. 

But Nicky is, and always will be, the key to Joe’s heart. 

Which means if Booker can show enough remorse, if Booker can prove he’s changed, if Booker can get Nicky to  _ believe  _ in him, then maybe, just maybe, Nicky will talk to Joe. And if Joe agrees to let Booker come back - the rest will fold. 

Nicky’s sweet. He doesn’t want Booker to read things that will possibly upset him, but Booker needs to read them with Nicky so he can show Nicky just how sorry he is. That he’s thought about his choices, that he’s learned how to be better, that he’s ready to come home. 

Booker sits at his desk and he writes notes to  _ Dom Casmurro.  _ He writes down everything he can think of about jealousy and what it means, and how it gets out of hand. He even idly sketches out a poor drawing of Bento’s family and how Bento ruined it with his own behavior. 

By the time Sunday’s come along, Booker’s all but trembling in anticipation. All week he’s felt scrubbed raw with a bristle brush. He can’t remember when he last ate, the garbage around the house has started to pile up. He needs to do laundry again, and there’s a smell lurking from the bathroom that he hasn’t investigated. 

Still, he’s breathless as he stares at his phone. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Then—it rings. He snatches it up and greets his brother. “Hey Nicky.” 

“Hello Booker,” Nicky greets in turn. It’s a little more sombre than last week, but Booker guesses it’s because of the book.  _ Dom Casmurro  _ is hardly the charming adventure of Bilbo Baggins and his many oddly named dwarven companions. “How...how did you find this week’s read?” 

Booker pushes back on any mental analysis he could give that brief hesitation. He squints down at his notes and he starts from the top. He talks, and he talks, and he talks. He speaks on Bento’s feelings toward his son, his wife, his best friend. He speaks on the affair. He speaks on how Bento had been so jealous that he’d become too blind to see that he had everything he’d wanted in the first place. 

Nicky is quiet as Booker speaks. He breathes in slow intervals, turning his face from the phone so it doesn’t rattle with his breath. Even so, Booker can just make out Nicky’s inhales. They’re not dangerously slow, this isn’t a Nicky on the prowl, but they’re slow enough that eventually unease starts to build at the back of Booker’s neck. He feels, suddenly, like a blind mouse in a viper’s pit, just waiting for the strike to land. 

When he’s been silent for more than five seconds, Nicky finally speaks. “Why did you choose this book, Booker?” he asks. 

“Because—” he stops only so he can change his wording, make it more receptive to the human ear. “Because I wanted to think about what the book means.” 

“And what does it mean?” 

“Huh? I already—”

“—No. Why did Machado write this book?” 

“To—to show his readers that...things aren’t always what they seem?” It feels like a weak answer. Like an answer a young pupil would offer to his teacher in class, only to receive a sharp thwack with a lecture stick right across the knuckles. 

Nicky doesn’t thwack him, but he does sigh. “Do you know the difference between jealousy and envy, Booker?” 

He doesn’t. He tries to work out any possible variations he’s heard over the years, but they’ve always been interchangeable to him. Reluctantly, he asks: “They’re the same thing aren’t they?” 

“Imagine a pie. It’s a good pie. And at a party, many people take the pie and like it. When the last piece of pie is served, there is still one person who never received a slice. They look to the others, and notice one person has left their pie unattended. So he steals the piece of pie so he could have it for himself. This is jealousy. The desire to have something someone else has, and take it for your own gain.  _ Envy  _ is if that same person saw that same piece of pie, and rather than take it, he suffered the internal agony of its loss. Coveting, but not acquiring it on his own. Envy is to want something someone else has, so that you too can be the same as them.” 

Unease starts to settle into Booker’s stomach. Nicky asks, “Do you think Bento was jealous or envious?” 

But Booker hears:  _ were you jealous or envious?  _

And he thinks about Joe and Nicky, how blissfully happy they are. He thinks about all the times he’s missed his wife and wanted her in his arms, and all the times he’s gone to sleep knowing full well that Nicky lay only a few feet away, wrapped in the embrace of his beloved. He thinks about how Nicky and Joe can traverse their immortality with nothing left behind. Every step forward is just another day for them. Another day to be happy. 

Booker doesn’t want another day to be happy. He doesn’t want eternity of bliss. He wants his wife, and his children, and to have died in 1812—remembered as a loving father and good husband. Not the immortal too selfish to share. He isn’t envious. He doesn’t want what they have. He isn’t even properly jealous. He doesn’t want to take what they have for himself. He just wishes...he just wishes they could have understood him better. And being near them didn’t hurt so much. 

But there’s not a proper answer for that. Not now. Not in this context. Booker swallows and says, “Jealous,” with as much certainty as he can muster. 

Nicky makes a noise under his breath. It could very well be disgust. Booker can’t decipher it. All he knows is that the anxiety has started to climb up his spine once more. It cradles the base of his head like two palms ready to snap his neck at the last possible second. “I can’t be your therapist, Booker.” 

Booker’s starting to hate hearing Nicky say his name like that. At the end of each sentence, like a full stop period. It grits under his skin. Cuts his flesh and makes the invisible hands around his neck turn vice-like in their ministrations. 

“I can be your brother, I can be your friend, but I cannot be your therapist. I cannot talk to you about these things. It is...too much. You need to talk to someone, but it’s not me.”

“What are you saying?” 

“I’m saying I call you to talk about books. To share a common interest. To speak with you on things that are not going to harm us in the end. I cannot...I cannot keep making these connections to things that hurt you—hurt me.”

Anger snaps through him. He asks, “How the fuck is this hurting  _ you?  _ I’m trying to apologize!” 

“Stop.” 

_ “Stop what?!" _

“Stop apologizing. I know you’re sorry.” 

“Then why are we like this? Why can’t I come home? Why are you even calling me?” 

“Because you wanted to die so badly you sold us to be tortured by a madman, Sebastien.” He’d hated hearing “Booker” at the end of ever sentence, but hearing “Sebastien” was worse. His breath catches in his throat. Pain lances through his head. He feels, for a moment, like he’s been shot. “I’m trying to remember you’re my brother, that I love you. That I want you to be in my life. I cannot do that if you are determined to guilt me into bringing you back.” 

“I’ll be better.” 

_ “I can’t.”  _

“So what, we’re just supposed to read stupid books for the next one hundred years? Chat about characterization and diction? Make no mention of who we are or what they mean to us?”

The scoff that echoes across the line is almost worse than the horrible naming convention Nicky’s started up with. It sounds so dirty in Nicky’s voice. So ugly. Like a hacking gag right before a lob of spit splats on the pavement. “We are hundreds of years old,  _ every  _ story will relate to us one way or another. That does not mean that we cannot talk about them. Only, I have no desire to be manipulated by you into forgiving you like I’m a prisoner bonding with my captor. Let me forgive you at my own pace. Stop  _ trying  _ to guilt me into doing it.”

Oh, Booker realizes. Nicky didn’t forgive him. He isn’t talking to him because he’s rejecting the 100 year ban. He’s talking to him because he’s managing the ban on his own terms. “It’s your turn to pick a book,” he hears himself say. 

Nicky’s quiet for a few moments. Then, “Anne of Green Gables.”

_ “Fine.”  _ Booker hangs up. He glares at the phone. He glares at his notes. He glares at everything he had prepared regarding  _ Dom Casmurro.  _ He hates it all. “Fuck you, Nicolo,” he hisses, and he tears all his notes to shreds leaving confettied paper all across his floor. 


	4. Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery

In 1873, Sebastien le Livre and Andy arrived on Prince Edward Island. Banners and ribbons still hung through the streets of Charlottetown, celebrating PEI’s brand new confederation. They’d come here as a stop over on their way further north. In the morning, they planned to board  _ another  _ ferry to Newfoundland. There, someone apparently would help them get to Greenland on to Iceland where Nicholas and Joseph were waiting. 

“What do you think of Canada, Sebastien?” Andy asked as they settled into an inn for the evening. 

“It’s not as cold as everyone says it is,” he replied grumpily. If nothing else, the humidity was threatening to strangle him alive. 

Andy snickered in a truly unladylike fashion. If she weren’t so gorgeous, more people would call her out on her appalling manners. As it was, they were too distracted by her face to comment. She was a perfectly carved Grecian statue come to life. Sebastien had the ruthless desire to de-robe her and see if beneath all those layers she truly could complete the statues he’d studied in school. 

“You’d think you’d have grown tired of the cold trying to invade Russia,” she mused. 

“Ha. Ha.” He tossed his hat onto the mattress, tugged his overcoat off, and began undoing his tie. Rolling up the sleeves of his shirt, he sat down to remove his shoes. Andy observed as a conductor might, waiting for the strings to tune themselves properly and prepare for the start of the movement. He asked, “What do they even do here?” 

“Here? They plant potatoes. Raise foxes.”

“Foxes?” 

“For the fur-trade.” 

“Never understood the fur-trade.” 

Andy grinned, smiling so cruelly that Sebastien knew he’d made a mistake somewhere. “And  _ that’s _ why you didn’t survive in Russia,” she said. 

Frustration built in Sebastien’s chest. He glared at the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen, and wondered if she’d enjoy a slap for her cheek. Considering how she was practically daring him to do it, he suspected she might very well. “For  _ fashion,  _ not practical use,” Sebastien hissed in the end. “Furs are so hard to maintain, and some of those designs hardly make use of the pelt properly.” 

His immortal benefactor seemed to take this under advisement. She tilted her head back, frowning up at the ceiling as she considered his words. “Are you interested in becoming a furrier?” she asked.

“What?” 

“We all take on normal jobs from time to time. If you have an interest—”

“—I have no interest in such things.” 

“What does interest you then?” They’d been together for twenty years by that point. It was the first time she’d bothered to ask. 

He almost wished she hadn’t. Because as he sat there on the bed undoing his shoes far slower than he needed to, he couldn’t think of a God-damned thing to say. 

* * *

Mondays are hard. The day after Book Club leaves Booker feeling raw. He wanders about his flat, scowling at every part of it. He hates it more than he has a right to hate anything. Hell, he hates a lot of things he doesn’t have a right to hate these days. It’s cheap though. Cheap and beneath the notice of anyone who might think about trying to find him. (Though of course Nicky knows, which means the team knows, and so someone else  _ probably  _ knows. Frankly, that thought doesn’t bother him in the least). 

Mondays, though. Mondays find Booker more agitated than usual. The book suggestion for the week is another children’s book. He hasn’t read it, but he’s heard of it. Canada in particular is obsessed with it, and if you go anywhere on Prince Edward Island there it is. Lucy Maud Montgomery’s birthplace, Anne’s Land, and every possible groping reference that can be made. Even some of the coastal features around the island are preserved only because they were a part of Lucy Maud Montgomery’s _memories_ of the island and therefore had to be preserved. Cape Tryon and its massive cormorant colonies owe a debt of gratitude to an author and a character that lived over a hundred years before they ever hatched. 

Booker visited PEI a few times over the years. It’s rural and persnickety about come-from-away outsiders only there to play tourist. Even when a bridge was finally built to connect PEI to the mainland, thousands of islanders protested its development. They wanted to be left alone. If someone had a burning desire to visit the island, they could take a ferry. The bridge was built despite their protests. That’s progress for you. 

The Monday after Nicky assigned him  _ Anne of Green Gables  _ to read, Booker drags himself down to the bookstore and searches the shelves for a copy. It isn’t there, and he doubts it’ll be in the next store he checks. He checks anyway. 

His stomach gurgles and begs him for food, but he ignores it as he makes his way through Paris. There’s nothing stopping him from going to every bookstore in the city, and so he dedicates himself to the futility of finding a half-way decent copy of the book to read. 

Seven stores in, he eventually does come across a battered copy of  _ Anne...La Maison Aux Pignons Verts  _ in a used bookstore that’s got more dust and cobwebs than actual books. Which is saying something, considering the books stack floor to ceiling as far as the eyes can see. He sneezes as he wipes a creepy crawly from the cover of the book; he squints down at the smiling red-headed child on the cover with her straw hat and apron dress. 

The book is priced at four euros. He tosses the clerk a five and walks out the door without the change. His stomach still hurts, so he stops to get a quick bite to eat, grumbling at the lines as everyone rushes out from work to capitalize on the only two hours the restaurants are open for lunch. 

The book weighs heavily in his pocket. It’s barely a kilo, but it still makes his jacket sag in one direction as he sits and pokes at the hard-boiled eggs in his seared tuna sandwich. He tugs it out and slaps it on the table. It’s already been treated rough in the bookstore, a few more crumbs aren’t going to damage it really. Flipping to the first page with one hand, Booker squints down at the too-big font always used for these kinds of books. 

It starts with Mrs. Rachel Lynd, town busybody and gossip exemplar who pretends she can keep her thoughts to herself. It’s the kind of character that’s supposed to set the scene, the mood as it were. She’s not terribly important to the overall plot of the book, but she’s there to enter the reader into the world. 

All Booker can think of is Jeanette Marchand, the old maid who lived down the road from him and his wife for nearly thirty years before she  _ finally  _ caught the pox and died. May she rest in hell. Jeanette came by every morning promptly at six to join them for breakfast. Amelie never had a bad word to say about anyone, but when Jeaneatte stopped over, she always scrunched up her nose and sucked in her cheeks like she’s taken a bite out of a truly atrocious lemon. Still, she greeted Jeanette every morning at six, welcoming her to their table and offering her jam with her bread. 

Jeanette gabbed away each morning long, telling them about the baker down the road, the scandals involving young lovers in alleyways (Amelie always interrupted these for the sake of the children, but Jeanette could not be overcome.) The woman prattled with a determination that could give Mrs. Rachel Lynd a true and proper run for her money with the kind of impertinence she displayed. 

“She’s just lonely, Bas,” Amelie would whisper every afternoon when Jeanette left to find another home to molest. She’d wrap her arms around his waist, and stand on her tiptoes so she could rest her chin on his shoulder. “Everyone needs someone to talk to." 

Booker shoves the book back in his pocket and barely remembers to pay before storming from the restaurant. 

* * *

Nightmares, Booker learns early on in his immortality, only get more inventive when you can’t die. The old thought of: if you die in a dream, you’ll wake up, no longer applies. In fact, it only modifies in a kind of horrifying way that digs into the psyche of the dreamer. 

In 2010, the team had all gone to see  _ Inception  _ in theaters. They’d watched it, fascinated, and left the movie debating the interior presence of the dream. It reminded Booker of the _Matrix_ almost. In the sense that, the dream was real to the person experiencing it, so why would you ever leave once you had paradise?

If Booker has to live forever, why not do it in a beautiful dream with his wife and children? Where Amelie can chastise him over dinner for tracking mud into the house, and he could teach the boys everything he knew. 

He didn’t tell the team when he watched  _ Inception,  _ and he certainly never told them when they watched the  _ Matrix,  _ but he wouldn’t mind living in a world run by machines. He wouldn’t mind sleeping through whatever they could concoct. Their world was a nice world. Where reality simply...lacks. 

Manufactured dreams, like children’s books, always have happy endings. Real dreams to not be so kind. His dreams are filled with a drowning woman, beating her bloody hands against a coffin, scratching at rusted iron walls, gagging for breath. 

After two hundred years, Booker’s exhausted of seeing her. The only thing that keeps her out are narcotics or booze. He’s used plenty over the years, getting it down to an almost exact science on how much liquor he’ll need to push the dreams away, on just how much he’d have to shoot or smoke to be able to get through the damn night. 

Sometimes, when he manages to think of her, he feels bad for Nile. She’ll have to come up with her own methods. He wonders if she’s spoken to the others yet. About how often the dreams come. About how painful it is. Feeling Quynh’s pain as her own. Feeling her lungs fill with salt water. Feeling her skin healing itself over and over again as the water threatens to degrade it. Sometimes, even feeling a fish biting at her cheeks. 

Monday night, Booker drinks himself into oblivion so he doesn’t need to worry about it. 

Tuesday, though, his attempts to sleep through the day led to a screeching pain tearing through his skull. His hands feel like the skin and bone have been torn off. His fingers burn so badly he thinks they might have actually been unattached. He wakes, screaming and tucking his hands to his chest. His lungs spasm. He feels like he’s been struck in the back so hard the air’s left them entirely. He gasps for air. He opens his mouth but nothing sucks in. He tries desperately to breathe. A hoarse groan scratches up his throat in his attempts. 

Black spots dance across his vision. He flings himself off his bed. His legs tangle in the sheets and he falls hard on his shoulder. Something clatters from the bedside table. His phone.  _ I’m dying,  _ Booker thinks. Really, actually, dying. He cannot breathe. His fingers must have been severed in the night. He doesn’t know how or why, but everything hurts and he can barely see. He can’t even speak. 

He cracks a hand against the phone. He can’t see in the dark, can’t assess the damage. No blood gets on the screen as he desperately smacks the redial button on the last call logged. He doesn’t even have it in him to touch the speakerphone. He lays down, pressing his head against the cool hardwood floor as close as he can. Tears pool in his eyes. 

“Booker?” Nicky asks. He sounds wary, uncertain. There’s noise behind him. People talking. Laughing. Booker tries to breathe again, it makes that rasping noise and nothing else. He tries to speak, but there’s no wind in his chest to make a noise. The sound of a door closes. Booker flinches and turns to the door of his room. It’s exactly as it was when he went to sleep. The noise had come from Nicky. Nicky’s alone now. In French, Nicky asks him, “Are you all right?” 

Again, Booker tries to speak. Nothing. He chokes and gasps. He’s vision is blurring badly now. He’s going to pass out, and it was so stupid to call Nicky. What’s Nicky going to do? Nicky isn’t even in Paris as far as Booker knows. He’s going to die here, with Nicky on the phone and what a shit way to go. He fumbles to hang up, but Nicky starts talking. 

No, not just talking,  _ reading.  _ He’s reading the English version of  _ Anne of Green Gables,  _ and it takes Booker ages to even understand what the words mean. 

Nicky reads with the slow cadence of someone who’s well used to reading aloud. He doesn’t rush, doesn’t slide his sentences together. He affects voices, though only a small amount. He doesn’t try to pitch them one way or another to denote gender, but he speaks almost more fantastically. More emphatically. 

He’s finished the first chapter by the time Booker realizes that he’s breathing again. He doesn’t know when that happened. He can’t recall when his lungs finally spasmed and drew in air. All he knows is that he’s crying, sniffling, coughing, and still Nicky reads with the calm patience of a parent overseeing their sick child. 

Amelie used to read for their boys. They liked _ A General History of the Pyrates _ the most. Sometimes, Booker would stand in the doorway just to listen to her read to them. Her soft voice filling the room with magic and wonder. 

At the end of the second chapter, Nicky pauses. “Book?” 

Dragging air into his ravaged lungs, Booker replies. “I’m here.” 

“Are you all right, now?”

“Yeah...yeah, sorry, I shouldn’t have called.”

“You can call if you need us.” He should have said  _ me.  _ Nicky’s the only one Booker’s spoken to since his exile started. How could he call the others? “Do you want to talk about it?” 

“Nightmare,” He says. He doesn’t continue. He looks down at his fingers. They’re not bleeding. They haven’t been severed. There’s no blood on his head. He’s bodily whole. It’d just been a nightmare. A horribly, painful, all too real, nightmare. 

“Do you want to talk...about it?” 

Shame coats Booker’s throat. He shakes his head decisively, knowing full well Nicky can't see him. “No. I’ll...I’ll talk to you on Sunday. Thanks for...for reading to me. I _did_ get the book.” 

Nicky pauses. Hesitates like he wants to say something. Booker waits, patiently, but eventually Nicky just sighs. “I...I miss reading out loud sometimes. I don’t mind. And...I’m sure you did. Was it very hard to find?”

“No,” Booker lies. “I should go.” 

“Are you sure?” 

“Yeah...sleep well...or...have a good day if it’s morning where you are.” 

“You too.” 

Booker hangs up and goes to find himself something heavy to drink. He doesn’t care what it tastes like at this point. He just never wants to dream another dream again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for sending me book suggestions! I'm very grateful. Feel free to keep sending them, but as a rule I won't have them read anything that involves: suicide, drowning, or child death. I feel like these are too triggery for these characters in this story, even if the books in real life are wonderful!


	5. Poetry and Prose

Things feel different after that. Booker can’t even explain how different, but it  _ feels  _ different. Nicky calls every Sunday like clockwork, and Booker still rushes for the phone. But...strangely the impulse to get angry has lessened. Numbed. Booker waits for the feeling to rise, the resentment or the fury, but nothing happens. He feels tired more than anything else. Tired and a bit washed out, but the anger that came so quick during these calls seems to be taking its time in coming back. 

Instead, it’s replaced by an altogether different kind of niggling. He isn’t sure he’s allowed to talk to Nicky about things that aren’t strictly book related unless Nicky brings them up, but the question floats around his mind the more they meet. 

It lingered about his mind when they discussed Anne’s feelings toward Gilbert in  _ Anne of Green Gables.  _ It stroked his interest when the following week they talked about  _ Room  _ by Emma Donohuge. While Nicky spoke about how some things felt natural if one never experienced anything else, Booker thought about the things that never felt natural in  _ his  _ life. Immortality aside, some things had been just  _ strange _ as he lived with Andy, Nicky, and Joe. Almost as if he’d been placed in a Room just like Jack. Only seeing what someone else let him see. Nothing more. (Then again, he had to concede that it’s entirely possible that the Room was often one of his own design. He’s the one who put up his own walls. If others put up walls too, they only did it around the barriers he constructed.) 

The next week, Nicky suggested  _ Stardust  _ by Neil Gaiman. They talk about promises and greed and love. Booker thinks about quiet conversations, shifty eyes in the dark, and disappointments. The week after, Booker cajoles Nicky into committing to the complete works of Edgar Allan Poe. It’s over twelve-hundred pages from start to finish, a compendium of short stories and poems that lurk over the edges of the darkest and brightest parts of the human soul. 

“My wife,” Booker says when they finally reach  _ Annabel Lee.  _ “Her name was Amelie.” He knows Nicky knows this. It’s not like Booker never spoke about his family before. Still, the introduction seems necessary. Important. “She…” he cannot seem to finish the thought. 

Nicky finishes it for him, “Was your Annabel Lee.” 

“Yes.” 

Nicky doesn’t chastise him for punishing himself again, that hadn’t been why he suggested reading Poe. Sometimes things hurt. And...he wanted to talk about her. Needed to talk about her. “She used to,” Booker huffs. “She used to get so mad when I tracked mud on her floors. I’d come in from outside, and she’d just. ‘Bas, Bas, get back outside this instant, I don’t want you in here like that.’” A wet sound, half laugh half sob, jerks up from his chest. “And the kids, she’d rally them up better than any Lieutenant. She’d snatch them by the ears and drag them to their chores, yammering the whole way.”

“She sounds like a firecracker,” NIcky says gently. 

“Oh she was. She was. D’you see her when you came by that one time?”

“I don’t remember.” 

“She was short. So short. Like, only came up to my chest. She’d have to stand on her toes to reach anything. But she—she never let it stop her. She had all these stools in the kitchen and she used a broom to get at things she couldn’t reach. She used to use it for more than that too, whacking at the boys if they were getting into trouble, or chasing chickens from the neighbor’s yard.” 

He’s quiet for a while. Listening to the phantom squawks and calls of the terrified hens as Amelie ordered them back to their clutch. She and her broom, swinging it about like a gladiator. Her hair out of place and her sleeves rolled up on her dress. 

“She should have lived forever, not me,” Booker says at last. 

“She’d have missed you,” Nicky replies, somber but kind. “She’d have missed her children. And her no-good husband tracking mud on her floors.” Booker laughs, but it hurts. 

“We grew up together. Did you know that? Her family lived not far from mine. My mother taught her how to weave and shear sheep. She was always underfoot at my house. We got married the day she turned sixteen.” 

Nicky is quiet. He’s quiet for a long time. “We can...we can only honor them by living lives they would approve of,” he comes up with in the end. “Treasuring their moments. Not forgetting them, but allowing them to be a part of our lives even in death.”

It’s the opening Booker had been waiting for, and he summons enough hostility just to color his question. “How would you know?” he asks. Nicky goes quiet again. He breathes softly on the other line. “How do you know how to handle losing someone you love like this?” 

“Yusuf is not the only family I’ve ever had,” Nicky says so soft that Booker barely caught it.  _ Yusuf,  _ he said  _ Yusuf.  _ Not Joe.  _ Yusuf.  _ It came out without much thought or consideration, a slip of the tongue that Booker knows only came about when Nicky was thinking about his own past. Long before their names were changed into anything at all. When they were just  _ them.  _ Eleventh century warriors, locking swords in the hot sands of Syria. 

“Who’ve you lost?” Booker asks. 

“Two hundred years we spent with Lykon,” Nicky says. It sounds like a recitation. Emotionless and bland. “Five hundred with Quynh. I had a sister and a lover prior to my death. I have watched generations live and die, children I cared for, families I loved. I haven’t lived only in a vacuum with no one but Andy and Joe and you as my companions.”

“Why don’t you want to die?” Booker asks. 

“Because if I die now, I might not be there for someone who needs it.”

It’s not the answer Booker wants. Nor does it even address the growing question that’s been bothering him since he heard Nicky read to him the night he panicked bad enough to call. But it’s something. 

It’s a start.

* * *

Nicky counters his Edgar Allan Poe with  _ Where the Sidewalk Ends  _ by Shel Silverstein. The following week, not to be outdone, Booker suggests poems by Augusto dos Anjos _.  _ Nicky actually laughs at that, and when it’s time for his turn, he chooses the youngest reading level thus far by suggesting  _ Corduroy _ . 

“Nicky, that’ll take five minutes to read,” Booker moans. 

“Then add  _ Madeline _ too.”

“You’re killing me, Nicky.”

“I’m catering to your inner child.” 

“That’s some new-wave millennial bullshit right there.” 

“Nile’s a millennial.” 

“She put you up to this?” 

“No. All six  _ Madeline  _ books. See you next Sunday!” It’s a terrible turn of phrase, but there’s no better one in French. It rolls off Nicky’s tongue as if it doesn’t hurt every time, and Booker repeats it. He won’t  _ see  _ Nicky next Sunday. Just hear from him. 

And still, Nicky’s being persistent. Children’s book after children’s book. 

There’s something on the tip of Booker’s tongue, and he can’t quite figure out what it is. But it gnaws at him relentlessly. Waking him up in the middle of the night like Miss Clavel saying  _ Something is not right.  _

* * *

The bookstore closest to Booker’s flat recognizes him now. She’s started to smile gleefully when he walks in. She nosily asks Booker about the books he gets. She questions if he has any kids and what a good father he must be to buy all these books for them. She side eyes his more adult selections, and Booker needs to force a smile to get through interactions with her. 

Needless to say, he starts going for longer journeys about the city. He walks dozens of blocks, squinting at the new fashion in the windows as he meanders on by, or smelling the fresh bread being baked in the patisseries. Sometimes he even stops for a bite to eat, remembering that food still tastes good even if he doesn’t actually need it to survive. 

His mind becomes a walking map of all the bookstores in Paris. He knows which ones will take the most time to get to, which ones are more likely to have the obscure titles, and which ones cater to a multi-lingual crowd. It takes him hours, sometimes, to walk from one place to another. But the walking feels good. As much as he complained about it when they’d discussed the  _ Hobbit,  _ Booker likes the feeling of movement. He likes how his muscles get a nice ache that they don’t usually get any other time. It goes away relatively quickly, but it’s still there. A reminder that he’s human. 

A reminder that he’s alive. 

“Why children’s books?” He eventually asks Nicky once they’ve analyzed the drawings and words used on every single  _ Madeline  _ book. “You didn’t read them before.” 

“I did,” Nicky counters. “Perhaps not as often as I do now,” he admits a little quieter. “But I did read them.” 

“So why now?” 

“They’re kind,” he says. “And you deserve kindness.” 

_ You’re the one who’s kind _ , Booker wants to say. Instead. He suggests  _ Independent People  _ by Halldór Laxness, and Nicky scoffs at the title. 

“One of these days, you’ll stop trying to counter every nice book I give you with one that’s even more depressing than the last.” 

“Augusto dos Anjos isn’t  _ depressing  _ Nicky.” 

“Yes he  _ is,  _ Booker. Terribly depressing. He’s worse than Poe.” 

“Poe buried someone alive in a wall, and then another person under his floorboards only to hallucinate their beating heart until he died of terror.  _ And!  _ He had a fucked up raven.”

“Dos Anjos has an entire poem about the decay of the body being preferable to the immortality of a written word.” 

“He’s got a point.” 

Nicky scoffs so loudly that Booker giggles. He actually  _ giggles _ . “You’re absurd,” Nicky declares. 

Later, Booker texts Nicky a picture of two snowmen. One has a hairdryer aimed at it’s head. The other is reaching out with two stick arms and a carrot nose yelling “NO! DON’T DO IT!” 

Nicky writes back:  _ ABSURD. -_-  _

And Booker laughs hard enough to startle a pigeon resting in his window box. It gives him the most unamused ruffle of feathers, coos at him in a particularly insulting manner, and flies off.  _ All right,  _ Booker texts Nicky.  _ I’ll choose a nicer book next time.  _ There’s got to be something out there that doesn’t involve dark introspective contemplation. Something that’s  _ not  _ a children’s book. He’ll figure it out. He’s got two weeks before it’s his turn again. Plenty of time to make it work. 

But still, the question he really wanted to know the answer to wouldn’t leave him alone.  _ Why does Nicky read aloud so well, when he never does it?  _


	6. Family

Time passes. 

Booker dedicates himself to finding new books he hadn’t read before. He wanders Paris, collecting books from one shop or another. He flicks through the pages of battered copies of novels on the dusty shelves of stores forgotten in time. He smiles to himself when he sees childish handwriting in the margins. The occasional drawing. His thumb traces the inky reminders of curiosity from years past. 

Sometimes he even tells Nicky about it. Here’s a face, a dog, a house. This child hated this part, this child loved this part. Even on the more adult books that Booker insists they read on his turn, he’ll find marginalia and he’ll imagine a child creating it. Someone bored and forced to read the book for class. Someone invigorated by the story and cannot help but immortalize their thoughts as they read. 

It feels, almost, that their book club has expanded by one more person. A changeable entity that comments on literature with unstructured thoughts and concerns. Nicky sometimes announces marginalia of his own, and Booker thrills at the thought that wherever Nicky is — he’s actually gone to a used bookstore to buy his book. For whatever reason, that feels good. It’s like looking up at the moon on one end of the world, knowing wherever his brother is—the same moon shines for him. 

Booker trips over the aftermath of book club almost daily. Each novel is stacked in an ever growing tower that threatens to topple whenever he walks by it. It only grows too. And eventually, one tower turns into two. Three. They threaten violence at each stubbed toe. Booker scowls at them in their imperfect state. 

He wanders around Paris looking at bookshelves next. He inspects ones for height and weight. He runs his hands over the embellishments. He considers materials. He debates the best kinds with Nicky on Sundays. “I don’t know, plastic is just so  _cheap,”_ he gripes as he scrolls through options on google. 

“So’s leaving them stacked on the floor like some kind of heathen.” It always startles him when Nicky uses words like that.  _ Heathen.  _ Joe would have been a heathen to Nicky when he was...younger. Now they’re lovers. 

“What exactly  _ is  _ a heathen to you?” Booker asks, brows furrowing. He’s never asked before, always too caught up with whatever they were doing to press for more information. 

Nicky pauses, consideringly. “Sarcastically or…?” 

“No, like how do you actually think of heathens?” 

“Not by the definition it likely has,” Nicky replies. Booker can imagine him shrugging in the quiet room he always goes to whenever they talk. Where there are no voices behind him and it’s just them, separated by however many miles there are between them. “I do not think of  _ religion,  _ really. More the concept of...against what’s acceptable.” 

That doesn’t sound like a full reason, and Booker says as much. “It’s more than that,” he presses. 

“True. Perhaps a better definition would be, someone who doesn’t believe what  _ I  _ believe is right.” 

Booker snorts. “That sounds closer to the truth. A bit conceited, sure. But closer to the truth.” 

It earns him a laugh. “There were many heathens who thought to chastise Joe and I. Brutes more interested in involving themselves in someone else’s personal life than they were in finding peace in their own lives. I never understood it. Almost a thousand years on this Earth, and still—I do not understand why people cannot keep their thoughts to themselves.” 

“Nicky,” Booker draws out slowly. “You invaded Syria because it was full of Muslims.” 

“I was wrong,” Nicky replies with no shame. He never hesitated to admit it when he was at fault. He always stepped up. It was revoltingly impressive. “I’d have hoped people learned from our mistakes, rather than just repeat them over and over again.” 

“You hope a lot for humanity.”

“It’s worth hoping for.” 

Booker doesn’t know what to say to that. He doesn’t even feel the previous surge of hatred or irritation that usually came whenever Nicky said something that immediately reminded Booker of how lucky Nicky was compared to the rest of them. Nicky and Joe, together forever, happy in al the ways that Booker could never be. Of course Nicky remained an optimist. How couldn’t he have been? He got everything he ever wanted. And yet, Booker can’t seem to summon up the same outrage that had fueled him for decades. It sits like a dead weight in his gut, present but useless. Disinterested in rising up the fan the flames of an argument Booker can’t bring himself to make. 

For a conversation that started about bookshelves, things have taken a noticeably more sombre tone. Yet Booker can’t find it in him to complain about that either. He sits at his kitchen table and looks out the small window above his sink to the gray sky beyond. “How are you always so calm?” he asks. It’s not the right wording, not really. He can’t think of a better way to phrase it, though. All he sees is Nicky, endlessly patient and kind, and a world not worthy of any of that. 

“I’m not,” Nicky counters. He doesn’t laugh, doesn’t even sound amused. He’s taking the question as serious as Booker meant him to. He’s gentle, though. In the way that Nicky is always gentle. Slow words and soft tone. “I am angry often enough, Booker. I hate the same as the rest of the world. Perhaps the only difference is there are things that I can control, and things that I cannot. If I cannot do something to change my circumstances, then all I can do is accept them.” 

“But  _ how?”  _ Booker asks. “How do you just  _ accept  _ shit? Like. Andy. Andy was shot,  _ I  _ shot her. I got you all captured and tortured and I could have killed her, and I thought I did, and Joe started yelling immediately but you told him to stop. You told Merrick that if Andy was going to die it was just her time.  _ How  _ do you accept that?”

They had a rule, of sorts, to not talk about this. They were book club and nothing more, but Booker can’t stop the questions from coming. He’s desperate for an answer. For some kind of understanding, because he can’t fathom it. He can’t piece it together. How can someone live for a thousand years and just accept that their immortal sister and mentor is going to die? 

“Everything dies,” Nicky whispers across the line. “I cannot change it.” 

“But it isn’t  _ fair! _ ” Booker says in turn. It’s childish and wrong, and he half expects Nicky to say “life isn’t fair” in response. But Nicky doesn’t. 

Nicky just agrees. “It isn’t. It isn’t fair at all. And I would give much to earn more time with her. But...I can’t change it.”

“Aren’t you mad?” 

“Sure. But what good will yelling do about it? What good will fighting do? Will it make her live longer? Will it give us more time with her?” 

“I didn’t want her to die. When I shot her. I thought she’d be all right.” 

“She is all right,” Nicky tells him, gentle as always. No blame. No condemnation. 

“She’s not  _ healing  _ anymore!” 

“She’s not.” 

Tears press against Booker’s eyes. He swats at them, sniffling loud enough that he’s sure Nicky can hear him. Nicky doesn’t interrupt. He lets him take a few deep breaths to get himself back under control. “I didn’t think it through,” he whispers at long last. 

And Nicky, with the balm and benediction of a man who has walked the earth for a millenia, sighs heavily. He says, “I know. I understand.” And for the first time in nearly two hundred years—Booker believes him. 

* * *

Booker gets a wooden bookcase with Winnie the Pooh characters painted along the sides. They’d just finished reading it last week and when he saw it in person, Booker couldn’t help himself. He heaved it up into his flat, pieced it all together, and stuffed all his books onto the shelves. It’s childish and ridiculous, and Booker thinks it’s the best thing he’s bought in ages. 

He takes a picture and sends it to Nicky, earning a:  _!!!!!!! :D :D :D :D  _ in response. 

That Sunday, they read Seannan McGuire’s  _ Every Heart a Doorway,  _ and before they even begin Nicky is questioning the bookcase. How tall it is, how wide, if he thinks he’ll need another one. He wants more pictures, so Booker sends them. A warm feeling collides in his chest as he laughs with his brother about something as silly as his purchase. 

When they finally get down to talking about the book, he’s settled with his feet propped up on Piglet’s shelf, novella in hand and comfort wrapping around him entirely. “Did you like the book?” he asks Nicky already musing on what he should suggest on his next turn. 

“I did,” Nicky replies. “Though...I’m confused.” 

“About what?” 

“Every doorway opened for the characters into a world that made them uniquely happy. So Is it only possible to be happy in those worlds? And if you’re not in one of those fantasy worlds, are you forever doomed to be miserable?” 

It’s the first time they’ve had such different views on a novel. It’s shocking that it took almost six months to get there. Booker sits up a bit, feet falling off his shelf. “I took it a different way,” he says, heart beating faster in his chest. “I...I thought that the only way she was allowed to even  _ go  _ back to her fantasy world was when she figured out how she could manage without it.” 

“She wouldn’t have been truly happy without her world though…” 

Booker thinks. He rolls it over in his mind. He weighs the book and all its subtleties, and he says: “Happiness comes in different shapes. Maybe she would have been happy without her doorway, once she figured out that she could live without it.” 

As soon as the words leave his mouth, he feels a cold snap slither up his spine. He stares, unblinkingly at the Winnie the Pooh bookcase.

Nicky doesn’t notice the hesitation. He can’t see him. Can’t see how he’s frozen solid in his chair. He keeps talking. “But what about Kade? Kade was happy in  _ his  _ fantasy world, but once the fairies realized they’d misgendered him they sent him back to our world. He should have never been sent back, he should have been happy there. The doorways open for what they needed the most, and so he should have been allowed to stay.” 

“Maybe...it’s only what they needed at that time,” Booker says. “Maybe...maybe it’s just what they needed so they could find what they needed to know about themselves, so they could move forward.”

Booker doesn’t say: Maybe that’s why I had my wife and sons. Maybe that’s why I’m on this road. I got my perfect ending, I got the things I cared about most. Maybe I’m here, like this, with you, because this is also what I need. And I need to go through this to figure out who I am. What I’m meant to be. 

“I felt bad for Jill,” Nicky continues, oblivious to Booker’s revelations. Oblivious to the way Booker’s head has started to spin, his fingers twitching at his sides. Booker wants nothing more than to find Nicky, throw his arms around him and hold him close. To find Joe and beg for forgiveness. To embrace Andy and be there for her final years. To watch Nile come into her own as an immortal. She really will be such a wonderful addition to the team. “She went back to her world, but she’ll never be able to be what she wanted there. Will she ever be truly happy again?” 

“No,” Booker says. “Sometimes you change so much you can’t go back to the way things were.” Finally, Nicky’s breath catches. The silence on his end is more telling than anything else. Booker laughs, it sounds hysteric even to his own ears. “Everything dies,” he repeats Nicky’s phrase with silent wonder. Then with childish delight, he says “It’s the circle of life.” 

And Nicky makes a putrid sound that can only mean Booker’s caught him mid drink. He can almost feel the spit coming from Nicky’s mouth as he laughs around whatever mouthful he’d taken. Nicky immediately descends into laughter, giggling so stupidly that Booker laughs with him. 

Things die, and those deaths form the basis for new life. New birth. And eventually, Booker will die too. And when he does, however long it takes, Amelie will be there waiting for him. He’ll meet her, different than he was before, but still ready to be there with her. 

He knows now, that if time reversed. If his wife and children were there at that exact moment, and he had a choice between them and the team, it would  _ hurt  _ to choose. It would hurt, like it hurt Odysseus, to return to his family and yet always be called by the sea. By the life that he once lived. 

Nicky may love the Iliad because of its romantic notions with Achilles and Patroclus, but Booker loves the Odyssey because it’s him. It’s his story. An endless quest to return home, only to get there and realize: it isn’t what he wanted anymore. Booker closes his eyes. He imagines the doorways to fantasy realms where everything he truly wanted could be given to him. Happiness on a platter. 

And very firmly, he closes the door in his mind. That’s not reality. Not  _ his  _ reality. 

Not anymore. 

* * *

Nicky suggests  _ The Secret Garden  _ next. 

Booker spends his week thinking of hidden beauty locked away by a miserly man incapable of seeing things for what they could be. He stops at museums and he looks at paintings of flowers. Of dancing children. Of family. 

He talks to Nicky about his trip, about what he saw in the Louvre. They laugh at the lines that always flocked to the Mona Lisa when there were so many other wonderful works of art worth admiring. Nicky even indulges and tells him about some of the painters that he met in his lifetime. The works that he enjoys the most. The ones that reminded him of the art Yusuf— _ Yusuf!—  _ made. 

“He paints?” Booker asks. “I see him sketch a lot, didn’t know he painted too.” 

“Yeah...he doesn’t paint nearly as often anymore. But he used to. He used to paint portraits of people we loved. We’d hang them up in our homes.”

“Of Andy and Quynh and Lykon?” 

“Them, and others too.” Booker remembers, suddenly, what Nicky said months ago. He’s seen generations live and die. He’s lost more than Booker ever will. For every year Booker lives, is just another year Nicky already went through. He out paces Booker in lives lost. 

“It’s good...having a reminder...I wish I had paintings of my kids. I can’t remember what they look like anymore. Not really. It’d...it’d be nice. To know.” Nicky makes a sound, half gasp half sob, and Booker can’t identify where it came from. Alarm courses through him. “Nicky?” 

“No...I...Yes. I understand. What do you want to read next week?” he asks, ending the call almost as soon as Booker answers. Booker sits there, staring at the phone, and tries to work out what the hell just happened. 

Nothing comes to mind. So he stands up, and starts his usual walk around the city, hunting for a bookstore that’s almost certainly closed. It’s late. He’ll have to go back on Monday. He walks anyway. 

* * *

The following week, Booker’s determined to put things right. Whatever spooked Nicky wouldn’t be repeated. He summons all his courage, prepares half a dozen fun things to talk about that have nothing to do with paintings at all, and paces about the flat waiting for the phone to ring. Because Nicky is late. And that bothers him more than anything else. 

When it finally does chime, relief courses through Booker’s body like a spigot turned loose. It flows across him and splashes along the floorboards. Even the sun starts to shine a bit more through the kitchen window. His finger is already tucked between the pages at the  _ best part  _ of Margaret Atwood's  _ Blind Assassin.  _ Right where the big secret gets revealed and all the pieces come together like a well crafted puzzle. He snatches up his phone and answers with a far too exuberant “Nicky!” 

Joe answers, “Not Nicky,” and all the excitement leaves Booker in a moment. 

He actually feels his breath clogging in his throat. His hand spasms inside his book and fear ricochets up his body as his fingers squeeze the phone to his ear. “What happened?” he asks, breathless and desperate all in one. 

“Nothing  _ happened.  _ A job’s taking longer than we thought. He’s busy. He asked me to take his place in your...book club.” 

“You can’t just  _ take someone’s place  _ in book club,” Booker says. It’s stupid. It’s completely nonsensical. This is the first time he’s heard Joe’s voice in six months, and he’s actually picking a fight with the man. After all the time Nicky’s spent trying to smooth things over, Booker’s getting ready to toss it all down the drain. He can feel Joe’s anger through the phone. It’s digging its claws down the skin of his chest, raking him from the edge of his collarbone to the end of his sternum. 

“It’s  _ book club,  _ Booker. Just say something meaningful and I’ll pass it along.” 

_ “No,”  _ Booker snaps. He drops the Atwood. It hits the floor and loses his page, but that doesn’t matter so much as whatever nonsense Joe’s spouting. Booker paces. He goes to the window and looks out. The sun’s ducked back behind a cloud. His open spigot feels clogged. Paris is living on, oblivious to the chaos of his home, and he hates every part of it. He feels the most insane urge to just tear the cover off the Atwood. Just rip it to pieces and throw it away so when Nicky finally gets around to talking to him again he can spite him good and proper. “That’s not how it goes,” he tells Joe. “It’s a conversation, a dialogue, you can’t just - you can’t just have me talk the whole time about the book. Did you even read it?” 

“I just found out about this today Booker, for fuck’s sake just tell me about the stupid book then.” 

“It’s  _ not  _ stupid.” It was one of the best books he’d ever read. He hates Nicky, just then. He hates him with a passion he didn’t even know he had in him. He  _ promised.  _ He  _ promised _ , every week without fail. And the best he could do for a replacement was Joe? What, Nile couldn’t have stepped in? Andy? 

What if Andy was dead? Would they have told him? The air feels thick in his mouth. He’s dizzy, suddenly, and he sits down. His foot kicks out and nudges the  _ Blind Assassin  _ where it lays discarded on the floor. “You can’t just...you can’t just...this isn’t how it goes.” 

“Well sometimes things get in the way. Are we doing this or not?” 

“Not,” Booker breathes. He feels like the word’s torn from him. 

“Fine.” Joe hangs up without saying goodbye. 

* * *

Booker hasn’t gotten well and truly wasted in months, but he gives it his best effort following Joe’s phone call. He leaves, drinks his body weight in one bar after another, finds a liquor store that’s willing to put its license on the line in order to sell him booze when he’s so clearly trashed, and then drinks half the bottle on his way back to his flat.

Still. He sees the shadow in his window before he gets to the door. He knows there’s something in his apartment and he grimaces as his liquid sloshed brain tries to come up with a logical solution to all of his life’s problems  _ and  _ the person in his home at the same time. 

He comes up with nothing, drops the bottle he’d been coveting since he managed the purchase, and just sags onto the steps outside his door. He takes a deep breath, trying to regulate his brain into something useful. 

When nothing seems to work, he just sighs, takes up his keys and his gun and goes through the doorway to meet his intruder. 

And frankly, despite all of the time he spent talking to Nicky and coming to terms with  _ family,  _ he’s still more than a little off put when he sees Quynh standing in his kitchen, drinking a glass of water, and greeting him by name. 

**Author's Note:**

> Find and prompt me at falcon-fox-and-coyote.tumblr.com


End file.
